Pitching in a Pinch; or, Baseball from the Inside

Copyright by L. Van Oeyen, Cleveland, Ohio
ILLUSTRATED
GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
Made in the United States of America
Copyright, 1912 BY CHRISTOPHER MATHEWSON This edition is issued under arrangement with the publishers G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York and London The Knickerbocker Press, New York

Introducing a reader to Christy Mathewson seems like a superfluous piece of writing and a waste of white paper. Schoolboys of the last ten years have been acquainted with the exact figures which have made up Matty’s pitching record before they had ever heard of George Washington, because George didn’t play in the same League.
Perfectly good rational and normal citizens once deserted a reception to the Governor of the State because Christy Mathewson was going to pitch against the Chicago club. If the committee on arrangements wanted to make the hour of the reception earlier, all right, but no one could be expected to miss seeing Matty in the box against Chance and his Cubs for the sake of greeting the Governor.
Besides being a national hero, Matty is one of the closest students of baseball that ever came into the Big League. By players, he has long been recognized as the greatest pitcher the game has produced. He has been pitching in the Big Leagues for eleven years and winning games right along.
His great pitching practically won the world’s championship for the Giants from the Philadelphia Athletics in 1905, and, six years later, he was responsible for one of the two victories turned in by New York pitchers in a world’s series again with the Athletics.
At certain periods in his baseball career, he has pitched almost every day after the rest of the staff had fallen down. When the Giants were making their determined fight for the championship in 1908, the season that the race was finally decided by a single game with the Cubs, he worked in nine out of the last fifteen games in an effort to save his club from defeat. And he won most of them. That has always been the beauty of his pitching—his ability to win.